Ha, how ironic. My car died too, this week...but it isn't fixable unfortunately! Or rather, it is, but it would cost over $1,000 and on a 211k mile car with a huge oil leak, weird transmission fluid, and bad shocks so I said 'heck no' and it is currently waiting for me to do something with it at my house...lol.

Is your car fixed now, though? I hope so!!!

LOVE Fab's new halter. Looks like it barely fits though! Or maybe I'm just used to how ridiculously huge Kenzie's was on her....eh. But the navy is PERFECT for him!

Thanks Christy!! :) I'm sure you'll do fine in college :) It's really not that hard. I majorly slacked through my 5 years of college...and look at me graduating! haha So I'm 1000% sure you'll do justttt fine. <3

Thanks Caroline!

Yayyyy Cherri!!! *high five*

I saw your thread about that, Allyson!! Sad day! And it made me laugh cuz our lives are so darn similar. [but I'm super glad you survived...that sounded really scary!]
Supposedly it's fixed. The mechanics couldn't find anything precisely wrong with the starter [the part that was freaking out - it would turn the car on, then just keep going...even after you turned the car completely off+pulled the key out. It'd keep going until the battery died=terrifying] but they replaced it anyway [3rd time it had been replaced in 6 months]. However, the times it was replaced, my dad did it and then I did it=my dad pretends like he knows what's up with cars...but I'm pretty sure he's faking 99% of the time. And I know nothing about cars. So we could have definitely put it in wrong.
They also gave it new brake-somethings and fixed the radiator.
Hopefulllllly it should be good for short trips for a while [it has a bent axle, poor baby, so its days of long trips are overrrrrr]!!

Mr. Fabio has a weird face to fit. I'm a little confused about the fit too. On one hand, horse-size would have been too big in the nose+too long on the sides of his face..but he has huge jowls! This halter is cob/yearling size. It's weirddddd.
His cob/yearling grazing muzzle fits perfectly and cob bridles fit him perfectly too...except in the throatlatch area. Even the bridle I'm using now [horse size] is on the biggest throatlatch hole.
I think I need to mess with the knots a bit and "customize" it for Mr. SpecialPants.

1. On Saturday I got a behind the scenes tour at the Zoo!! I got to pet rhino and a hippo, fed them both, AND FED A GIRAFFE.
Unfortunately, due to privacy stuff, I can't post the photos online. But I want toooooooo.
Bummer deal.
But it was the bestttt.
The zookeeper told us all about the [kind] training methods they use on the animals which was super awesome to hear about.

2. Mr. Fabs got his first massage today! And boy, the massage-lady couldn't hardy believe how much tension he was holding in. She said that most all of it was emotional tension - kinda what I guessed it would be since he's a VERY emotional guy.
And dang, watching him work through the tension was crazy!
Every time I've ridden him, he's done a strange head-down+tilted-tooth-grinding thing which I just assume was due to the bit: NOT.
Or, at least, not so much.
He spent most of the massage with his head down as far as it could go, completely twisting his neck to the right, and grinding his teeth on the right side.

So that was really interesting. Maybe what he's doing undersaddle is less bit-hatred/playing around and more "emotional stress" [like you guys had suggested].
He also did a lot of head shaking/bobbing, which I'm familiar with as his stress-markers.

He was incredibly tight, the massage lady could hardly believe it. But he was much more relaxed, physically, by the end of the massage. Emotionally, he was still a nutcase...but that'll take some time.

The massage lady did give me some hope though! She may be, in the nicest way possible, totally bonkers...but she can read horses. She told me that she's pretty sure that Mr. Fabs will be dead-broke Quarter Horse-level "whatever" in about 6 months.
I'm really hopeful about that cuz, like I told you guys, he reallllly seems like that's who he wants to be.
Anyway, I hadn't even mentioned that to her and she came up with that guesstimation all on her own...so I'm hoping!! That would be awesome.

Of course, I love goofball him. I'm hopeful that he'll still be a goofball with energy...but less intense nervous energy. He is genuinely a ball of nerves a lot of the time, even my mom -who isn't a horse person at allll- can feel it near him, and I would reallllllly like to see that disappear.

So I'm hopeful!
The massage lady wants to give him a month of massages and she thinks that'll really help speed along his healing.
He's getting another massage on Wednesday this week, then Thursday, then the weekend off cuz I'm going to the beach! First day+night away from home in years!!
I'm gonna miss them and worry about them though. haha

your church run-in with NatGeo - totally awkward. I am picturing you literally running down the aisle, in and out of pews, and out these huge double church doors....stopped in the parking lot with your hands on your knees, slightly bent over trying to catch your breath...searching for your van - THERE IT IS! sprint to the van, and squeal your wheels getting the heck out of there! lol...

JC10, do you know what bad breath giraffes have? Or is it just Australian zoos that have giraffes with halitosis? Emily, notice any funny smells? I nearly passed out when I once breathed softly near a giraffe's nostrils herbivore greeting style and it breathed back at me. I tried another giraffe to see if it was just a one-off. The I stopped my research!

Gorgeous animals though. This is a famous photo from the West Australian zoo:

Julia, that's about what it was like! However I ride the train to church so it was more like: run to the train stop, hide behind whatever was available, and wish the train would hurry.
Dear NG. He's not terrible or anything, at all...just truly clueless while being the nicest ever. Actually, we're probably a lot alike in that respect. I never have any idea what's going on and people always claim that I'm sooooo nice [they have no idea what's going on inside my head! haha], and I'm 100% sure I sometimes accidentally say things to people that really freak them out too.
Maybe that's why I like-hate him...

And the giraffe feeding was great! It was somewhat disillusioning cuz we were just feeding them through a chainlink fence - wasn't like I got to touch one or anything...but they had to keep us safe!
We did get to see giraffe herd dynamics though - one was really dominant over the other two and, instead of biting/kicking like a horse might, the dominant one just lowered his shoulder into the shoulders of his compatriots and body-slammed them away! It was really interesting!! And I could really see why they didn't let us get real close.

Haha, gross, Sue!! We didn't get that close.....unfortunately?? hahaha the fence between us and the giraffes was probably 20ft tall so no giraffe-breath for us.
And SUCH A CUTE PICTURE!!! AHHH.

Things are going pretty well with Mr. Fabio!

He's really settling in pretty well. We have had one very minor setback - he started getting massages on Monday and the massage-lady pronounced his neck to be "a huge mess." So, in the interests of healing his neck, we have been commanded to avoid small circles and doing much work above the trot for about a month.
It's basically because he holds pretty much alllll his body's tension in his neck so he 1. needs to relearn how to stay loose [and since walking is his only "relaxed" gait] 2. until they're healed, needs to avoid stressing those muscles [via tight turns] unless they're fully warmed up.

SO, since I really want to help his body heal, I'm sticking to this plan like a fly stuck to flypaper. He'll be getting regular massages for the next few weeks, until he's figured out how to relax himself more effectively, and I'll be doing mini-massages on days he doesn't get a "real" massage.
It's actually kind of cool - I learned how to do a number of the techniques on Lacey and now I can put them to good use on a horse that really really needs them! I'm, of course, nowhere near as good as the massage-lady, but the massage-lady is always impressed with the results of my work so...I guess I'm not bad??!

Anyway, no tight circles and trying to stick to a walk kinda puts the damper on somethings..but it also means I have to be more creative with what we do! So that's probably good.

We've been working a lot with the tarp, stepping over small things, and hills. I figure that hills will build up his muscle, make him think, AND not add too much tension to his body.
Today we took it over to the far pasture where it hasn't been grazed much so the grass it REALLY long - that was great for him because all that grass brushing his belly was, apparently, super intense. I hadn't even thought of the grass being a factor, but he was mentally exhausted in about 15 minutes. He was physically tired too, but it was more mental than anything.
I tried adding in the tarp, but that was just toooo much. He's really funny - I can see it so clearly when his limit has been reached. I'm kinda glad that he's so open about his limits. It was more of a guessing game with Lacey, but he's just like "oh, hey, guys? I don't think I can handle this anymore...help plz??"
I'm hoping that his limit will stretch as life becomes more natural for him, but, for now, I'm glad he shares his limit.
I'm going to start stretching what I expect of him, as well, once he becomes less "fragile" [in the sense that he'll do things over his limit if I ask, but he'll get more and more tense with each over-the-limit repetition = exactly what we don't want right now], but, for now, we go one repitition past his limit to say "hey look, the human listened. She asked you to do it once, then you got to not worry about it anymore".

We're getting there!!

The GoatFather

Hazel: "you left me here with these clowns and literally ALL they do ALL. DAY. Is SLEEP??!"

One of the zoos here in MD lets you feed the giraffes. They have a platform that you get up on and the giraffes reach their heads over and take the food from you. I kind of feel like that's not such a great idea since your place had you feed them through the fence lol. Although I think they've been doing it for a while, so I guess no problems so far.

Also, I've just recently gotten into using tumblr and I just noticed you do you MAX blog on there, so I am now following you :)

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